This is most likely gonna be a long one peeps. But I think its important to have an interest in US Democracy. It is still a bastion for modern day democracy's, but if running candidates and possibly sitting presidents can influence the elections by ‘Weaponising’ the ‘State Spying Apparatus’ to gather Intel on your opponent. Well that’s a thousand times bigger than Watergate
So I’ve broken this into 3 main sections
What did Russia Do?
What did Trump Do?
Whats the Deal with this FISA Memo?
I should also have a what did Clinton do but that would be whole other post on its own her and the Clinton Foundation crimes are widely reported if you bother to look https://www.npr.org/2016/06/12/481718785/clinton-scandals-a-guide-from-whitewater-to-the-clinton-foundation
What did Russia Do?
So lets take big leap back and firstly look at the RussiaGate Narrative
This is what we know as far as Russia's interference with the 2016 Election.
1. Hacking groups allegedly linked to the Kremlin (Russian Government) hacked into the DNC (Democratic National Committee) Servers and shared that data with Wikileaks who released it publicly
2. Hillary Clinton's Email server is hacked again with alleged links back to Russia, This information is also released by Wikileaks.
Notes on the Clinton/DNC Hacks:
Whilst the means of which the Clinton Emails and DNC data was obtained is questioned and demonised in the media. The content of the emails is not really disputed, and reveals at the least corruption and gross misconduct at the worst illegal activity.
Clinton is put under the spotlight as to why she held a personal server outside of the government network/system which she used for government correspondence including correspondence deemed important to National Security. i.e ‘Top Secret’ , ‘pay to play’ scenarios and much more. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37639370
3. Russia is also accused of alleged links to other organsiation that begin using Social Media to spread ‘propaganda’ of a negative nature against the Clinton campaign.
Its hard to know as to how much of this ‘propaganda’ was what we now call ‘fake news’ and how much was fact. Lets not forgot these hacked emails revealed some pretty big skeletons and dirty secrets from the Clinton campaign.
The media was quick to cast aside actual stories and focus on the sensationalisation of others, I’ll only briefly mention the whole John Podesta and the PizzaGate thing, where the whole scandal moved from the legitimate concern of Wealthy individuals taking advantage of young children. Got morphed into a story about a Pizzaria in Washington. Pizzagate was never about the Pizzaria it was about the likes of Jeffry Epstein and the Lolita express (https://nypost.com/2016/10/09/the-sex-slave-scandal-that-exposed-pedophile-billionaire-jeffrey-epstein/) and the possible continuation of such things by others in power today.
But as to how much of the anti Clinton propaganda was false, im not sure, many of the things I was reading turned out to be true, given what was revealed in the hacks.
So that appears to be the extent of Russia’s so called interference into the elections. Releasing private emails of one of the candidates, the contents as mentioned where rather damning, but true. And creating fake ads and news stories on Facebook.
Lets be clear the American public democratically(within their current electoral vote system) elected Donald Trump. Russia did not alter any votes cast by an American.
Arguing that the fake propaganda led to their decision to cast their vote is valid, but that’s the system we live in all candidates and campaigns use the tools at their disposal to spruik the good things about themselves (true or untrue) and chastise/demonise the other candidate. Propaganda, like it or not, is the tool of politicians and governments
PROPAGANDA: information, especially of a biased (or misleading) nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.
What did Trump Do?
Lets look at Trumps Connection, I don’t need to go into too much detail here. As this is the narrative most of us are familiar with, there’s dozens of sites laying out the timeline. Here’s the Wikileaks one of your interested. Which I did use for this post
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections
But we all know the basic narrative. Trump colluded with Putin, to I guess put all the above in place, the hacks, the botnet army. So he could become president, once in power im not sure what the deal must have been, if it was to weaken the US as a ‘World Power’ so that Russia could assume that position, that doesn't appear to be working.
I just found this, Yes its obviously written with a Pro-Trump biased in mind. But can we just look at the facts presented. (In this day and age I cant fact check every site I link to, all I can do is choose sites that should be reputable and hopefully report fact, like local newspapers, newschannels etc. any article will always have a bias one way or the other, that’s inevitable)
https://www.denverpost.com/2017/12/27/the-10-best-things-trump-has-done-in-his-first-year-in-office/
So at this point in time Trump himself has never been publicly named as being under direct investigation for Russian Collusion. Rather his campaign I believe is under investigation, names like Trump Jr, Jarrod Kushner and Carter Page I believe other staff in his campaign have also been charged, mainly for lying in previous legal testimonies.
So there still does not appear to be, even after a year of investigation, any direct link or evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign and the Russian Government to interfere with the elections. Unless it just has not been released yet, but i’d expect if there was a ‘smoking gun’ we’d have seen it by now.
So Did Russia do all those things we talked about earlier? Yeah probably.
Did the Trump campaign ask the Kremlin to do this? So far the evidence says No.
It is important to note however, that President Trump is under investigation, as part of the wider Russian Investigation (being conducted by Robert Mueller), for ‘Obstruction of Justice’ (this is an article form 6 months a go, but a good summary of what was happening at that point in time http://time.com/4823514/donald-trump-investigation-jay-sekulow/)
So Trump Fired James Comey. Remember him, the former director of the FBI. Leading up to election even democrats where calling for his head when he had closed the Hillary Investigation into whether her server was illegal. But then re-opened it a few days before the election.
Poor old James Comey didn’t know what team he was on. Stick with the Clinton's or follow the evidence (This whole Russia Scandal is a rabbit warren, here’s another long article on Comey, even I tl;dr this one but it seems to paint a good picture from what I skimmed. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/james-comey-fbi-director-letter)
So Donald Trump is under investigation for Firing Comey and possibly tying to cover up/interfere with the Russian investigation. I believe that’s when Robert Mueller stepped in and took over the investigation, which brings us up to about the present point in time. #MemoDay
Whats the Deal with this FISA Memo?
Just Some background: FISA is The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is a United States federal law which establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign powers" and "agents of foreign powers" suspected of espionage or terrorism.
So basically the dragnet surveillance that Edward Snowden revealed that the US government was doing. Well FISA is no not supposed to target US Citizens or any communications happening within the US. If they want to target a US citizen they need to go to a secret court (The FISA Court) which can approve a warrant to serveil a target.
Glenn Greenwald has done a great article on the FISA court (its long), and a bit scary really, the lack of oversight.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/19/fisa-court-oversight-process-secrecy
But a key takeaway is this:
When it is time for the NSA to obtain Fisa court approval, the agency does not tell the court whose calls and emails it intends to intercept. It instead merely provides the general guidelines which it claims are used by its analysts to determine which individuals they can target, and the Fisa court judge then issues a simple order approving those guidelines.
So a FISA warrant can be a very broad brush. Which is what has been alleged is occurring with the Russia Investigation, In that once a FISA Warrant was issued for 1 member of the Trump Campaign that appears to give ‘Carte Blanche’ to target the communications of those close/connected to that staff member, including the private phone conversations of the president himself.
So what has been revealed in the FISA memo that was controversially released the other day? (yes it was drafted by Republicans) it reveals that evidence submitted to obtain some of these FISA court documents was fabricated by the DNC.
In other words the Democratic Party paid for fake ‘opposition research’ (granted they may not have known it was fake at the time) (Just a quick link on the Steele Dossier if your interested as it lies at the heart of the this current scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Russia_dossier)
This fake information the ‘Steele Dossier’ was then used to obtain warrants on the Trump Campaign. It is alleged that higher Ranking FBI officials knowingly submitted these false documents. The Memo also alleges the warrant may very well have not been issued without that ‘dossier of course many opponents of Trump are alleging the Dossier may have very little to do with the issuing of warrants
Great article here summarising the FISA Memo definitely worth the read, pretty damning stuff it its true. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/house-intel-memo-released-what-it-says/article/2647937
Some of the key take away's are:
- The Steele dossier formed an essential part of the initial and all three renewal FISA applications against Carter Page
- Andrew McCabe confirmed that no FISA warrant would have been sought from the FISA Court without the Steele dossier information.
- The political origins of the Steele dossier were known to senior DOJ and FBI officials, but excluded from the FISA applications.
So there you go, make of it what you will.
What I have found particularly interesting is the lengths both the FBI and the Democrats have gone to to suppress the release of any of this info. First citing National Security, then it was ‘memo had been altered’, then it was omitting key facts (that one may still be the case lets wait and see) but now its released its apparently a big nothing burger.
“Why where you all up in arms about it being released then?” I smell a cover up.
This article sums it up nicely and its called the “Streisand Effect”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/thanks-for-the-memo-now-release-everything-else/article/2647979
Summary
So now that we have some background info, I want to share this Awesome Infograph. This is a great summary of all the alleged connections and they seem to go all the way to the top. This really could just be the tip of of the iceberg
Source: https://www.theepochtimes.com/epoch-times-investigation-beyond-the-memo_2431505.html
Wow - I know this has been a long one. I really appreciate you reading this far.
Of course much of this can be construed as conjecture and heresay (in that we are relying on those Government officials that have read the classified documents and know the full story to share their interpretation of those documents) much of the FISA warrant process im sure is secret. And even the Mueller investigation is secret, although we are starting to hear of more and more biased there as well (http://www.newsweek.com/russia-investigation-new-anti-trump-texts-fbi-agent-given-congress-786472)
The last thing I wanted to sign off with was just to quickly put this into perspective in regards to The Watergate Scandal:
The Watergate scandal began early in the morning of June 17, 1972, when several burglars were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate complex of buildings in Washington, D.C. This was no ordinary robbery: The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught wiretapping phones and stealing documents. Nixon took aggressive steps to cover up the crime afterwards, and in August 1974, after his role in the conspiracy was revealed, Nixon resigned. The Watergate scandal changed American politics forever, leading many Americans to question their leaders and think more critically about the presidency.
So Nixon and his campaign team tried to wiretap their opposition, by breaking in to their offices.
The Clintons, the DNC and maybe more, where involved in manipulating the ‘Spying Apparatus of the State’ to do exactly the same thing but on a much grander scale an in a much, much more covert way, and the cover up could go deep.
Oh before I sign off, The craziest things is even through all of this and being the so called victim of an illegal spying racket, Trump seems to have decided to endorse the extended mass surveillance of the world.
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/11/577453433/house-approves-bill-to-renew-spying-powers
I got your back a lot of the time Trump, but sometimes you are bit of a douche.
lol, I didn't realise there was an actual definition.
